Sunday, November 6, 2011

Geography: A Poem by Mark Wright (copyright 2011)


Geography

There was a time when
the world turned at my touch.
A desk lamp
and a good spin made day
turn to night
and back to day again
over the Fiji Islands,
where surely
there were better things
to do after school than
algebra.

In my desk drawer, I kept
a small plastic bag of rubble
that was supposedly from
the Berlin Wall.
But on my desk top, Germany
was still divided.
The Soviets still ruled
the Bloc,
and Czechs and Slovaks
were mashed together
in tiny print just above
Hungary.

Rand McNally should have
offered a refund when names
changed
and boundaries
shifted.
But, then, I wouldn’t have known
what to do with a new world
any more than Columbus
did when he sailed
the wrong way
to Asia.

Back then, I could cross
the Atlantic in a split
second.
And Greece was just
a fingernail’s length from
the tip
of Italy’s boot.
And I didn’t spend my days
wondering what the night
was like
where you are.  

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